Category Archives: Vector

I watched one video about Good Notes 4 and I was hooked! I love this app! It’s fantastic!

The writing in Good Notes 4 is surprisingly natural without too much auto correction on the lines. It’s smooth without being too smooth and simple to use. With how natural the writing feels and the use of the zoom feature it makes it even easier to write and use withing a limited space without making it uncomfortable or weird.

My only gripe is a lack of pen styles to choose from. With my messy handwriting and the fact that I have a tendency to switch between cursive and print as I write after years of rush rush rush in high school that never left my hand’s memory, there are particular pens that look better, neater and more legible when I write with them such as a standard slanted calligraphy pen.

I have a person preference for fountain and calligraphy pens that are sharp and/or slanted at certain angles. Most digital art or doodling apps provide these pens and it seems with their forever growing popularity a lot more note taking apps also have these pens. NoteShelf 2 for example has these pens with a lot of similar tools to Good Notes 4. If calligraphy pens are important to you, I suggest you skip this app in favour of NoteShelf or Noteshelf 2.

Good Notes 4’s idea of a fountain pen is a pen with pressure sensitivity but to me a fountain pen has always been a slimmer and shorter width calligraphy pen with rich strokes. I like the elliptical tip shape of a lot of fountain pens so I was disappointed. I have been using Adobe Draw to fulfil my calligraphy cravings when I feel like playing around with pens or Procreate.

I am sure (Though I haven’t researched it) that it uses vector because of how the tools behave and function, which has me even more impressed. Vector overtime lags. It’s inevitable. I am using Good Notes 4 on an iPad Pro 12.9 inch 64GB. I didn’t buy it outright I got it through Optus like a phone plan. There is zero lag when using Good Notes and I am not sure if there is a page limit, but I doubt I will ever reach it. As you use it and write with it, it feels like you are creating an ebook and it even exports as PDF or image file or it’s native Good Notes file for sharing your documents. In this post I will share an image version of the draft to this blog post. In the past I used to pre-write my blog posts so I could get all of my thoughts out better and more organised. Currently I am doing this in Good Notes 4, Notability and Noteshelf 2. Just for the sake of testing it out. So far, Notability is the clear winner.

Below is a draft for this post in image format. The image export is clean and crisp as I would expect. After exploring a lot of apps both paid and free, it seems image export is not a common option which makes little sense to me. As you can see, because of my writing, I prefer to write on grid paper to contain myself and my spacing. I then like to turn the template off and make it look like I’ve written on blank paper like I normally would in a regular art book.

But before I get too carried away in my excitement lets just back up to what I was talking about. There’s no lag. Even when drawing. In the handwritten post to this I wrote there was, I found it was actually another app in the background causing the lag which I usually have turned off but at the time I was quite tired. There’s no lag even when drawing in Good Notes 4 which is great. In Notepad + there was lag or other various issues and intrusive adds. And honestly for the price of Notepad + ($30.99 AUD) you still don’t even get half the amount of tools and functionality and options as Good Notes 4 or Notability. Two apps that even if bought together, don’t add up to the full cost of Notepad+.

In other apps, the lag can cause a mangled mess of squiggles and lines if you write or draw too fast. Even if shape drawing is turned off. This is not an issue with Good Notes, even if you have shape drawing turned on.

With this in mind, I must give credit to the shape drawing assistant. I have thoroughly enjoyed it’s auto correction when drawing shapes and lines. As an artist, and still a webcomic artist and now amateur animator, I frequently make mind maps and diagrams. I often make the good old classic “Yes” “No” maps when I need to simplify a character and their reactions whenever I get stuck. This option is invaluable and incredibly frustrating to use in other apps. Good Notes, Notability and Noteshelf 2 have mastered this tool. With other apps such as Evernote, the feature can become irritating and tedious. These three apps have found a way to make it work right and work for you not against you.

Which brings me to the highlighter option. You can get realistic highlight effects in Good Notes and the other apps but with the assistance of the shape drawing tool, you can highlight in accurate straight lines as you work. Not a lot of apps get it right but Good Notes have nailed it. It both feels and looks realistic, with a decent variety of colours to choose from as well as the option to choose custom colours just as with the pens.

A lot of other note taking apps tend to limit their highlight colour choices between 4 and 8 without the option to choose your own custom colours. If you’re lucky you can get 8 colours to pick from. If using highlighters is an important feature for you whether it’s for note taking or study, this app might be perfect for you. It’s very easy to import ebooks from what I saw, or use photo’s or even scanned images of text or whatever it is you need to use a highlighter on and just start marking out and annotating. I personally import my own drawings, annotate over or near them and link them into my mind maps and highlight the pathways in a colour code using different colours for either personality or emotions depending on the theme of the map. Good Notes and Notability has pretty much replaced notebooks for me.

I am also loving the page template choices. I love thick and wide ruled lines in notebooks being short sighted but once I discovered the zoom feature I no longer had to worry about my handwriting size and squinting. It is an ideal feature for me to be able to bring in my own templates even if it’s already in the list available, the fact that I can import what I like to use and just start using it is a wonderful feature.

Like I mentioned earlier I am an artist, so I often need to use storyboards or storyboard templates. In the past I would set this up with Clip Studio or photoshop but I prefer book style apps like this. I don’t always want to have to get on my PC to storyboard. Sometimes I just want to sit somewhere comfortable to write and draw, which isn’t always an option and I don’t always have the necessary amount of books or paper or pens. Using apps like this eliminates a lot of cost and clutter and has improved my production and overall work and story making abilities.

When I didn’t have an iPad, for a long time there I was using an app called Paper by Fifty Three. Now I just use that app for fun doodles. It’s just not quite the same as using Good Notes. I’m absolutely in love with it. I enjoy the cover choices but I am starting to favour Notability more with the option to use custom cover art designs using my own art and the tabbing and category options. I will still use Good Notes a lot but Notability is quickly taking over as the main favourite.

One thing Good Notes has over Notability is the ability to export your pages as images. This is extremely important to me for various reasons. PDF is idea for a lot of things but being an artist, I have a lot of image and drawing based posts which would be better suited to image exports for online hosting and basic displaying purposes online.

I am sure there are other features I have yet to find and use such as the search feature. I even think you can add audio recordings, I am not sure yet, but I do know you can add text as well which is useful. For the price and the functionality, Good Notes 4 is a well made and robust app that’s well worth buying and using on a daily basis.

Above is a speed up recording. Often called a speedpaint or timelapse. This will reflect on my blog post with the things I am trying to say.

I can’t call this a review because I will clearly be very biased. I’m going to come out and say it right here right now. I hate Adobe Illustrator!

Why? You might ask. Well I’ll tell you why.

It’s tedious, difficult and often requires multiple steps to do something that should realistically be simple. After all of these years it’s still very difficult to use. Affinity designer provides the same power in vector art and the same quality.

Clipping or masking in Illustrator has always been the ultimate pain. It was easier just to cut and create a whole new shape. I frequently abandoned it for Inkscape but I also didn’t like Inkscape. I wasn’t comfortable with it or the user interface and it lagged.

Lag was another big issue. Affinity Designer is much faster. I also hated that I would often need Photoshop for textures or to create a base image. We are all familiar with Photoshop’s lag. Trying to run both together at the same time was a really bad idea. I did so by accident once. My PC crashed almost immediately. In Affinity Designer, they have a raster drawing program inside of it. It’s called Pixel Persona and it’s accessible in what looks like it’s own user interface within the program. It’s a matter of clicking an icon to go from raster to vector.

What I also like is their Pixel Perfect mode. For me, that is a major bonus. I also like that I could use it to create vexel art if I so choose. It seems as though now Illustrator has something either the same or similar. I didn’t look into it to thoroughly.

I also dislike that despite the thousands of requests, certain features never got added or changed with Illustrator while Affinity Designer is more than happy to listen to artists. I mean we are the ones using the software after all right?

Then there’s the stigma that comes with Illustrator. You know, when people say “It has to be hard to use or it’s not worth it.” or “The harder the program is to use, the better the results.”. That’s just ridiculous. You shouldn’t need to jump through 40 hoops to do one simple task. Simple art should be simple.

I love how much faster I can work within Affinity Designer because of it’s ease of use and I love it’s ability to create complex pressure sensitivity with it’s vector strokes in a simple manner. It’s how vector art should be. Straight forward, to the point, edit and move on.

I love that some of the tools do multiple things where as in Illustrator I felt like I was spending more time looking for tools and using hotkeys than I was doing art. It frustrated me to no end. It’s one of those programs where you either really love it or you really hate it and I really hated it in the end. Loved the results but hated using it.

The video above was an artwork created in 2 hours. It would have taken me far longer if I had to use both Photoshop and Illustrator. The changing of programs, the lag, the crashing. Affinity Designer didn’t crash once. It only stalled for a moment but I think that was because of some other app interfering.

So far I love Affinity Designer. I can do what I need to do and create complex art. I am looking forward to their updates and I can happily wait for them. I highly recommend it especially if you are like me and you use a lot of layer clipping or masking. Very simple, very powerful!

This is what I have currently been up to lately. I’ve been reviving a webcomic, catching up on old webcomics and still studying and practising 2D animation. Mostly I’m taking some time off learning to paint and do webcomics. Software used was Clip Paint Studio EX. In all 3 videos.

This is getting asked a bit. Some may have noticed my disappearance on DA. Some are asking where am I posting art. Short answer, I’m not posting art. What I do post goes on Pixiv or tumblr. I will go back to DA eventually but I really need a break from there. Currently I’m in the process of writing two enormous tutorials and making 3D Assets for Clip Studio Paint. It’s going well so far. Here’s a few snapshots of my current works in progress.

The 3D pencil is a work in progress and very much needs to be textured on a flat material but all in all it went well. The table with cloth was more of an experiment. I’m glad it worked though because it’s opened up a lot more opportunities for me as far as background art and assets go in my drawings for things I still after all these years, can not draw in perspective.

This is my personal recommendation. I just want to mention that this is my personal opinion from my own experiences.

As a hobbyist animator I have tried almost every single animation program out there. I’ve always wanted to do classic frame by frame animation but doing it traditionally can be very expensive and I switched to digital animation. Besides being eco friendly you only have to pay for your tools once. I love the advantages of digital animation.

The only program I haven’t tried was CelAction simply because it didn’t have anything I needed and it was far too expensive for a hobbyist like myself.

If you are into classic animation like me and do frame by frame animation I highly recommend theses 6 programs. I will however be giving honorable mentions of other programs that you can animate with or use to prepare to create great animations. (I only use the first 4, specifically I only own ToonBoom Animate Pro and studio. I can’t afford TVPaint but I hope to one day.)

Sketchbook Pro 7

ToonBoom Studio, Animate, Animate Pro, Harmony (any of these suites are great for animation but I highly recommend Animate or higher)

CACANi

Adobe After Effects

TVPaint

Celtx

Reasons:

Sketchbook Pro has always been an excellent program for doing concept work but with the added feature of flipbook, it can make creating keyframes very enjoyable. It loads and runs fast and has very basic animation. One of the more notable features is the perspective rulers, this is particularly useful when creating background art for animation since most animation programs do not offer perspective rulers and you have to draw them manually. Taking advantage of these rulers can really help you excel in creating high quality animation and various graphics. This is excellent if you’re new and can help ease you into 2D frame by frame animation. You can then export and import into ToonBoom to take it further and create amazing things. Sketchbook Pro is also excellent for doing storyboarding and various concept work as well making it a very important tool during the early stages of design and creating model references.

ToonBoom has a wide range of software specifically for animation but each suite is aimed at specific types of animation but it can do it all. I recommend any of the Toon Boom products from Studio to Harmony. They are all capable of symbol animation, morph/tween, cut out, bone/puppet animation, stop motion and frame by frame. I also like the onion skin options and settings. I’ve found it to be very efficient. However I do recommend that you check the specs and use a trial before committing. There are still some compatibility issues. The only other con I can think of is the learning curve. Some say it is intuitive to learn while others don’t. I did not find it very intuitive but I did find it fairly easy to navigate through the tools. It was difficult at first to remember where everything was but fortunately ToonBoom allows you to fully customize your workspace. I would also like to add that unless you have Harmony you can only create vector art. If you want bitmap or raster based painted backgrounds or assets you have to import them. Fortunately ToonBoom offers an excellent library that you can customize and save your items for reuse later.

CACANi is excellent for a lot of reasons. The main one being that it can automate inbetweens and it’s stroke steadying settings. If you have shaky hands or an over sensitive tablet you will find this extremely useful. It’s not flawless with auto inbetweening and you still have to inbetween complex animation but it can be a great time saver and still produces quality animation. It basically does advanced vector morphing. It’s also all vector based. Some that are use to raster animation may not enjoy it and find it a disadvantage, but it is worth learning and using. Once you get use to vector animation you can really take full advantage of it and create some incredible things. Particularly if you’re a professional with limited time to get things finished. You can draw in it frame by frame by hand as well and you may find you only need Cacani and Sketchbook Pro for most of your work. CACANi is especially good for a more classic cel animation with cel shading. Anyone that has used ToonBoom or flash and tried to animate cel shading will know the difficulties it can involve. With it’s unique colour line separation pen and quickflip preview ,it makes the flow of animating cel animation much easier smoother and get it done in a much shorter amount of time.

Adobe After effects is a compositing program. I recommend it for filters and basic particles. It’s extremely useful to use the particles to make snow or falling feathers, leaves blowing in the wind or anything else you can think of. It’s especially good for glowing and various lighting or shading effects. I recommend it mostly because subscribing is cheaper than trying to buy Harmony. If you have ToonBoom Harmony, it’s unlikely that you would need After Effects. After Effects is also capable of puppet animation and does a really good job of it. In short it’s like photoshop for animation. I highly recommend it for it’s filters to edit your animations and push them further in design, effects and quality.

TVPaint has a lot of tools. If you have it, it’s unlikely that you will need any other program. It is mostly raster based. Recently it was upgraded with a lot of amazing new tools. If you are into puppet or bone animation I don’t recommend TVPaint. It’s mostly a frame by frame animation program. It has advanced and customizable lightbox options that make inbetweening and onion skin easy to use. With TVPaint you can do storyboarding as well which is a big pro including adding audio to your storyboards. The only Con is unless you have a Cintiq or dual monitors, it can get very cramped very quickly. It is professional grade software and has a fairly steep learning curve. However if you have some experience in animation with other programs you might find it fairly intuitive. I highly recommend trying the demo. Unlike other programs there is no time limit to test the software. You can’t save and it uses a watermark. Unlike ToonBoom animate family where you have to import raster images from photoshop for backgrounds, you can paint within TVPaint lessening the need for any other program.

Celtx is not animation software but it is a necessary program to have and use. It’s replaced word and OneNote for me. Celtx has online cloud storage and offers a range of writing formats from script writing to storyboards for film and comics. It’s most unique feature is the character database. You can create and story a database for all of your characters with indepth information plot ties and image reference. It’s freeware and well worth downloading and using. If you decide to get into serious animation I highly recommend using it and taking advantage of the character database to use alongside your script and storyboards. I personally use to use this for my comics in combination with Sketchbook Pro and it certainly has been a great help in the past.

Honorable Mentions:

Other programs that can be either used for animation or are extremely helpful during the animation process and concepting stages are listed below:

FL Studio (Unless you’re a composer I only recommend basic FL for creating your own sound effects and music. It is professional grade software and has a very steep learning curve. However it is well worth learning.)

Pencil (Free frame by frame animation. Still buggy and has been known to crash. Save frequently)

Blender (now has frame by frame animation. Done with grease pencil)

Tab (various suits, mostly all vector and I think cut out animation)

Digicel Flipbook (a lot of people still use and recommend this program. I personally did not take to it)

Anime Studio (vector bone morph animation)

Retas Studio (I don’t think it’s sold outside of Japan in english any more but I have seen some artists purchase it so I’m not totally sure.)

GraphicsGale (gif animation)

Synfig (free, mostly vector. Very steep learning curve, lots of issues for windows. Best used on Linux)

Tupi

Toufee

Toonz (same company that makes Tab, but to my understanding this one is more advanced)

CelAction

Flash (animation, symbols, tweening, frame by frame)

If you feel I have forgotten any 2D programs you think should be mentioned please leave a comment. This was very quickly written.

I know what some of you might be thinking. But it is one of the best programs that I ever subscribed to. Some of you know or a little while I was self publishing on Lulu.com and during that year I spent almost a year trying to get it to upload correctly until one day I’d had enough and subscribed to InDesign. Later I upgraded my adobe package to all apps. But it was the best thing I ever did.

I no longer have the bleed issues I once had and for those of you that publish comics, you will know the exact pain and annoyance I am talking about. I tried with everything to alleviate it but nothing worked. I tried OpenOffice, Word, Photoshop and even GIMP but nothing was going right. I still had major issues with the bleed being to thick, to short or my art getting cut off in the spine or off the page edges.

The main problems I was having was when it came to resizing. As a comic artist I have to work at 1200dpi for various reasons the main one being quality and screentone range. That’s usually around 8000px by 12000 px or so per page. When I finally started using InDesign my headaches (literally) we far less. Being able to set up the perfect template bleed, drag and drop and not loose image quality was by far the best part for me.

Aligning, numbering, watermarking and exporting became a breeze. These are all the reasons as to why I have come to love it. If it wasn’t so hard to get the perfect bleed for publishing in Photoshop and loosing image quality then I probably wouldn’t have found or needed it but it’s so important that it’s almost critical.

I can’t even begin to describe the hell I went through plus the money in carbon copies. I have such good faith in InDesign that I only buy one carbon copy knowing that it’s going to be perfect anyway. And I recommend it to anyone that is a writer or comic artist or any other desktop publishing career. It’s absolutely worth it and worth learning.

The only downside for me was the inital learning curve. At first it wasn’t too bad since I had learned Adobe Illustrator the prior to using InDesign but it was hard for me (as an artist) to get use to all the new tools and terminology. But it was worth it. It’s a program that keeps paying off. Not only that but since it’s so widely use you can always acquire a job or freelancing work with inDesign.

Overall it’s a great tool. If you have something else that you use that you think is better or just as good please do leave your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you and I’m sure others would as well.